Monday, July 7, 2014

Monday Musing: Mirror Mirror

Of course, the answer to that classic question (“who’s the
fairest of them all?”) is supposed to be “you—of course. You look fabulous.”
But whom can we trust to tell the truth, rather than just saying what we want
to hear?

When it comes to fashion, there is an
app for that, soliciting unvarnished responses to another classic--“do these jeans make me
look fat?” When the question is “are we (museums) great?” there isn’t an app
(unless you count Yelp ratings), but the blog-o-sphere can be a pretty good
mirror, if we are willing to look. Todays’ Musing points you to two recent
unflattering reflections.

Are
museums irrelevant, by internet start-up entrepreneur and homeschool mom
Penelope Trunk, might better be titled “are museums lousy places for kids to
learn?” Among her zingers served up in the post:

"Mirror Mirror on the Wall" By DarkNBrutal

“For today's kids, the museum is an improvement over school,
but not over learning at home. Which means that homeschoolers have little use
for museums.”

“Your kid's passion is probably…not on the list [of what a
museum offers]. Any museum is small compared to the world your kid lives in."

“Is it more fun to have all the information about
velociraptors at your fingertips, in the Internet, or is it more fun to be
limited to just what the museum chooses to tell you?”

“museums are like school. They give you a choice of what to
learn, but it's a very limited choice and it's in a confined space.”

Before you dismiss this criticism—take some time to listen. Whatever Trunk may or may not
know about museums, she knows what she, and her sons, like. And read the
comments (58 at the time I write), which reflect a balance of parents who agree
with her and some (I’m sure this will soothe our egos) who are total museum fans. It
is an interesting commentary in general on what people like and don’t like
about museums (also, unusually well-written and civil, as internet blog
commentary goes). Here is a sampling:

“You go once, or maybe twice, for the exhibits; you go
repeatedly for the community & for the opportunity to be an insider.”

“My kids have both been going to the museums regularly since
they were infants. In times of renovation, the temporary storage of a favorite
statue once reduced my toddler son to a weeping lump.”

“I've brought a lot of kids to a lot of museums and the best
way I've found to make the best of it is to have no expectations about what a
child will do there or get out of the experience…The biggest problem I have
with museums and kids is the rule about not touching anything, though this has
changed somewhat with the increase in hands on exhibits.”

“…unless you learn visually, you're not going to learn
anything new at a museum that you couldn't get for cheaper elsewhere.”

“Ok, I went straight to the source. ‘Hey son, do you like
museums?’ ‘Yep.’ ‘What about them do you like?’ ‘I like to look at stuff.' And
there we go. Mystery solved. :)”

“If our kids are on some kind of science kick – STEM,
animals, astronomy, whatever – we should be able to connect with an expert or
mentor at the science museum to help us educate our kids on the topic. Instead,
it’s just a big facility with stuff.”

“I think museums have value because they gather interesting
adults for my kids to interact with, other people who share a passion for some
arcane field of knowledge.”

(As a bonus, the conversation ranges widely over schools,
the special attention given to “underserved” kids v. gifted children, and the
economic model for museums, including commentary on the Charity Navigator info
about the Museum of Discovery and Science in Ft. Lauderdale. People actually
read our 990s!)

Now I don’t know Trunk from Adam, but the second post is
from someone I know and respect: Rob Walker, whom you might have heard talk at
the AAM meeting in Baltimore last year, about his “Significant Objects”
project. Rob is a guy who knows the power of objects, and the stories we attach
to them, but in “Who
Needs Zoos? In Praise of Nature Cams” he argues that “the mediated wild has
distinct advantages over, say, physical-world zoos — for animals and for us.”
Setting aside the conversation about the other roles zoos play in conservation
(research, breeding), Rob’s piece is a fascinating glimpse at the psychology of
watching animals, and a meditation on the value of the virtual v. the real (a
point Trunk also touched on in her commentary).

So your (somewhat extended) Monday assignment: read, listen,
and reflect on what these posts say about our image in society.

2 comments:

A mother of five stopped me the other day as I was walking through Conner Prairie, as she recognized me as the president. She explained that she homeschools two of her children and uses Conner Prairie as part of their curriculum and as a classroom adjunct for the other three. Other mother's express the same sentiment. AT CP we use story to explore science, technology, history, craft, the arts, the weather, plants, nature, and of course, significant events in the past. This mother emphasized that she can better understand her kids' interests, encourage curiosity, allow them experience things they have read about. Undoubtedly that is because our mission is to "inspire curiosity" and we take the challenge of engaging children and adults at the same time seriously.